


Full House

by Miss_M



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Codependency, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Humor, Nightmares, POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Recovery, Roommates, Thanksgiving, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22233961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: They all knew that their lives were waiting for them.Their lives could wait a little longer.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough & Mike Hanlon & Ben Hanscom & Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 28
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Full House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [telm_393](https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/gifts).



> I could not resist this prompt: _Everyone lives together in an Unrealistic Codependent Roommate Situation In A Big Codependence Mansion_ , even if the mansion is Mike’s grandfather’s farmhouse. Hope you like this extra treat! 
> 
> I own nothing.

Ben was driving, Mike rode shotgun. Richie was squished – his word as they’d all piled in, _I’m getting fucking squished here, guys_ – in between Bill and Beverly in the backseat. 

Ben pulled into a parking spot near the one of two doors which was closer to the Derry Walmart’s cosmetics section, and left the engine running. It did not escape Beverly how he’d scanned the empty parking spots nearest the door before choosing one where he could pull in so the car door by which Beverly sat was also nearer the Walmart entrance, and she wouldn’t need to waste precious seconds walking around the car. She wondered if that was Ben being paranoid or Ben wanting to spare her the few extra steps.

“This is a handicapped spot so…” Ben caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “Better make it quick.”

Beverly wanted to point out _again_ that they hadn’t all needed to come with her to the store. She only needed the one thing, she’d have been fifteen minutes tops, in and out even without the escort, and at two in the morning, the parking lot was almost empty.

She didn’t say anything snappish because barely a month had passed since their second trip to the sewers under Neibolt House, and none of them liked to be alone for long. She smiled, holding Ben’s eye in the rearview. “Wish me luck.”

She could hear Richie start up before she’d even shut the door. “I think she’s ruined your upholstery, man.”

Ben sighed. Mike half sighed and half laughed. Bill said, “Richie.”

“Dude, I’m fucking serious…” 

The rest of the witticism was lost as Beverly hurried across the empty stretch of concrete, and the glass double doors sighed open to admit her into the Walmart. She found the right aisle, grabbed the first box of tampons within reach, and made a beeline for the nearest free cash register.

Less than a minute later, Beverly yanked the car door open and shoved her way inside, forcing Richie to yield the half of her seat he’d occupied in her absence despite his claim that she’d stained it. 

“Let’s get out of here,” she said brusquely. 

Ben twisted around in the driver’s seat, looked at her empty hands, then at her face. She tried to keep her face still. 

“Where’s your, uh, purchase?” Bill asked, craning to see past Richie. 

Beverly nearly shouted at Ben to just fucking go. Her hands shook so badly she needed three tries to get her seatbelt fastened. “I left it at the cash register.”

Before anyone could vocalize the why, she spilled the rest, knowing she sounded crazy and not really caring. 

“The cashier was all weird. She asked me how my day was going, I said fine, then she looked at my item and said ‘There’s so much blood that comes out of living bodies, isn’t there?’ And then she smiled at me, and her teeth were all messed up, yellow and stained and rotting. I think…” Beverly glanced at the Walmart entrance, but no clown-like figure nor rotting corpse hove into view behind the glass doors. Beverly whispered: “I think she was one of It’s.”

Silence ticked by for several seconds, punctuated by the engine hum, and then the guys started speaking all at once.

“That’s impossible, you know that’s impossible,” Bill tried to soothe her.

“On a scale of one to ten, how hard are you PMSing right now?” Richie asked. “And how are you still PMSing, we came out here because you…”

“Beverly,” Ben started to say before his tone turned sharp: “Richie, why don’t you just shut up if you can’t say anything helpful!”

“Guys,” Mike tried to cut in. “Guys. _Guys._ ” 

Silence descended again. Beverly had the fleeting thought that, even though he’d stayed in Derry all those years, it was a shame Mike had no kids. 

Mike was speaking to her. “That woman was probably a meth addict. There’s been an uptick in addiction around here the past few years, since the foundry closed.”

“Really?” Richie said. “Tons of meth heads in such a charming place as Derry, you don’t say?” 

“I can’t,” Beverly said, hating how tiny she sounded. “I just can’t go back in there. Let’s just go back to the house, I’ll figure something out.”

Ben started to unbuckle his seatbelt, but not before Richie reached across Beverly and opened the car door.

“Fuck’s sake,” he said. “Let me out, I’ll go get your thing.”

Beverly stepped out of the car and remained standing, one hand resting on the car door, watching the Walmart entrance and avoiding looking at Bill or Ben or Mike. She wanted a cigarette so bad.

Richie practically sprinted out of the store, the pink cardboard box clutched between his hands.

“Did you even wait for change?” Beverly couldn’t help teasing him as he shoved the box at her and dove into the car. 

“Shut up,” he said. “You owe me big. _Big._ Huge. You owe me huge for this.” 

Beverly climbed in after him and shut the door. She cradled the tampon box on her lap while Ben pulled out of the parking spot. 

“Thank you, Richie,” she said, then put on her best Southern belle: “ _Mah hero._ ”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck me very much,” Richie groused, and the others snickered.

No-one sighed out loud or said anything as they left the parking lot and accelerated down the empty road, but there was a palpable sense of relief in the car that they were heading home, safe and together.

*

Mike’s grandfather had left him the farm, but the house and the outbuildings has sat empty for years. Mike wasn’t too proud to admit he’d always felt like he was being watched, living there alone after Leroy Hanlon’s death, which was part of why he’d moved into the janitor’s apartment in the city library. The main house had plenty of room for the five Losers, even though the roof let in rain in several places and the downstairs toilet had a tendency to clog.

The mosquito net on the back porch was torn in several places, but Bill liked it there. Sitting at the old dining table he’d rescued from the shed, with the predictable noise of rattling cutlery and small arguments coming from the kitchen behind him, and the view of the backyard and the woods that backed onto it before him, Bill felt both like he was safe inside the house and could keep an eye on things, so nothing and no-one could sneak up on them.

Not that anything scarier than the occasional fox ever crossed the backyard, but it made Bill feel better to spend his days on the back porch, writing a little on his laptop, backspacing most of it, and keeping an eye on things.

“Working hard or hardly working?” Richie said much too loudly behind him.

Bill jumped, bashed the fronts of his thighs on the underside of the table, and nearly knocked his laptop to the floor. Richie laughed so hard, Bill wished he were the kind of guy who punched his friends when he was embarrassed.

“F-f-fuck you, Richie,” he managed, and oh great, his stutter always picked the best times to take him on a little nostalgia trip. 

“I’m sorry, man.” Richie took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with the ball of his hand, still laughing. “I couldn’t resist.”

It wasn’t like Richie to ever apologize for being an asshole, so Bill decided to let it go. 

“F-f-for your in…” He paused, concentrated on his breathing, and the F came out short and smooth, while the S’s which followed rustled only a bit coming out of his mouth. “For your information, Candy Crush is an essential part of the writing process.”

“I can see that,” Richie said while Bill repositioned his laptop and sat back down in his usual spot, his back to the kitchen, facing the backyard.

Richie lingered beside him, craning down for another peer at the game on Bill’s screen.

Bill shut his laptop, and Richie straightened up. 

“Did you want something?” Bill asked.

Richie did that thing tall people sometimes did, where he didn’t exactly shift around or shuffle in place, but still managed to take up more space than he usually did. 

“Can you take a look at these?” He shoved a couple of printed pages folded into quarters at Bill. He was looking out over the back yard.

Bill unfolded the pages, which were covered in very short paragraphs and single lines of text separated by blank lines. “You’re writing your own material?”

“Yeah, you know. Trying to,” Richie said like it was no big deal.

Bill looked up into his friend’s face, and Richie just about managed to hold his gaze. 

“You know I’m not a funny writer, right? Also people tell me my endings suck, so…”

Richie reached for the pages, but Bill leaned back in his chair and held them out of Richie’s reach. 

“I’m just saying, my advice may be of limited use to you, but I’m happy to read these and give you some notes.”

Richie shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “Okay, sure. Whenever you have time.”

Bill smiled. “Candy Crush is kicking my ass, so now seems like a good time. I’ll catch you after dinner to go over your stuff?”

*

“This is fucking stupid,” Richie said. “No, you know what, let me clarify: everything about this is stupid, but this part right here is definitely the stupidest.”

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” Beverly said, holding Richie’s left hand. 

“Or you can pick something small,” Mike offered on Richie’s right. “For example, I’m grateful there’s pizza delivery on Thanksgiving and Sal’s had turkey bacon to put on our pizza.”

Bill nodded, holding Mike’s right and Ben’s left hand. “And I’m grateful that Ben picked up enough homemaking skills from his mom that we have at least one homemade side for Thanksgiving.”

Ben had made the mashed sweet potatoes, which sat in the center of the round dining table in the kitchen, in a dish painted with blue flowers which had used to belong to Mike’s grandmother. The pumpkin pie was store-bought, the cranberry sauce sat in a little porcelain dish, also with blue flowers, and retained its can shape, and the turkey-bacon pizza had been the compromise solution after the subject of buying and roasting a turkey was broached, and all the guys turned to look at Beverly, and Beverly stared back at them and said, _Don’t even go there._

“I’m grateful we’re not saying grace,” Beverly said. Off Richie’s look, she shrugged without letting go of his and Ben’s hands. “My dad could get weird about grace. I can do without the reminder.”

From what she’d told them, Beverly’s dad could get weird about pretty much anything, so Richie had no trouble believing that. 

“I’m grateful that we’re all here together,” Ben said, watching Beverly’s profile. Then he glanced around the table and added: “Don’t groan,” but nobody groaned, not even Richie.

Richie’s palms were sweating, Beverly and Mike must have been able to feel it, but they were too nice to say anything. He tried to think of something flippant quickly. 

“I’m grateful that more of you didn’t fucking die.”

He stared at the edge of the pizza box next to his empty plate and prayed that everyone would just pretend they hadn’t heard him. 

After a second or ten, Beverly squeezed Richie’s gross, sweaty hand, and Mike cleared his throat: “I think, as owner of the house in which we sit, that I should carve the pizza.”

*

Ben knew that he was dreaming, but that didn’t help one little bit. He was back at the clubhouse, which was in the sewers, or rather the clubhouse _was_ the sewers, and the support beams he’d been so proud of were giving way, and his body was being crushed by earth, his mouth was filling with earth, he tried to scream, and the dirt filled his nose and his eyes and his skull till he felt like his head would explode like in _Scanners_ , and Pennywise was laughing at him, that shrill cackle reaching through all the tons of earth to envelop Ben’s body like slimy fingers…

“Wake up.” Her voice in his ear, which was not filled with earth, and there was no dirt covering his face, and nothing heavier lay on top of him than the duvet and Beverly’s hand on his chest. “Wake up, it’s only a dream.”

Ben gasped for air, filling his lungs, expelling the last of the dirt, breathing deeply in and out and in and out, till he could lick his lips and speak. “Say that again.”

In the pitch darkness of the small hours, he couldn’t see Beverly’s face beside him, but he could hear the frown in her voice. “It’s only a dream?”

“Yes. It sounds good when you say it and I know it’s true.”

Beverly laughed softly and lay her head on his chest. They each had their own rooms in Mike’s house, yet most nights one of them wound drift into the other’s room, and the others had even stopped teasing them about it. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Beverly asked.

“Nope. Only a dream.” Ben stroked her hair. She always gave it two hundred brushstrokes before bed, and it crackled with static electricity. _January embers._ “Did you dream?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t a bad one.”

Ben’s fingers stilled halfway between the crown of Beverly’s head and the ends of her hair. “Really?”

“Really.” Her fingers quested up his chest and neck, to touch his chin, his lips, his cheek. “I know, right? How freaky to _not_ have a bad dream.”

Ben smiled. “Yeah. Really freaky.” 

He went on taking deep breaths, feeling the weight of Beverly’s head rise and fall with his chest, and thought about what having not-bad dreams might be like, and how long it would be before he started having them too.

*

“You have my accountant’s number in case of an emergency, _any_ emergency,” Ben said. “I mean that, call him no matter what happens, he’ll get you as much money as you need.”

“Thanks, but I don’t plan on using that number,” Mike said and loaded his duffel bag into his truck. He patted his shirt pocket, where his cellphone sat, full of emergency contact numbers and helpful tips from all of his friends. “Just taking it with me as a lucky charm.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “But if anything happens…”

“Nothing will happen,” Mike cut him off and smiled. “Nothing bad, at least.”

After a moment, Ben returned his smile. “An adventure. Right.”

“That’s right.” Mike clapped him on the shoulder, while Beverly turned to Bill and asked where Richie was.

Bill shrugged. “I told him Mike was heading out, he just mumbled something containing the words ‘fuck’ and ‘already’ through the door.”

“I don’t believe this,” Beverly muttered, then threw her head back and hollered at the house. “ _Richie!_ Mike is leaving! Get your ass down here now.”

“It’s okay, Beverly,” Mike said. “He’s been struggling, it’s fine if he misses this.”

“Like hell it’s fine,” Beverly replied and threw her arms around Mike. “Oh my God, I _really_ don’t believe this, you’re finally heading out of Derry! I’ll miss you, but not so much that I want you to worry and come back to check on us.”

Mike laughed, hugging her back. “I got you. And you know it’s not forever.”

Beverly pulled back to look at Mike and quoted his words from when he’d announced his intention to leave, back at him: “Someone has to push the boat out.”

They all knew it was true, that their lives were out there, waiting for them, and the gravitational pull of Derry and memories and the Losers being all together again, the fear as well as the comfort of it, would not last forever. 

“I’ve waited long enough to leave Derry for the first time,” Mike said as he let Beverly go and turned to shake Bill’s hand. 

The screen door banged open, startling them all, and Richie charged down the front steps and up to Mike like he planned on punching him, forcing Ben and Bill to jump out of the way. 

Richie poked Mike in the chest with his forefinger. “Do _not_ pick up any hitchhikers, no matter how cute and lost they look or how long it’s been since you’ve been laid, don’t ever order your burger medium-rare in highway diners because you _will_ get salmonella from that shit, and whatever you do, do _not_ visit Times Square when you hit New York! Those people are fucking crazy, you won’t get out alive. Plus, you’ll die of old fucking age before you find parking.”

Mike batted away Richie’s poking finger, stepped into Richie’s space, and enveloped him in a hug. “I love you too, man.”

After that, there were more hugs, and pushy yet graciously accepted advice, and a few tears, till finally Mike got behind the wheel of his pickup and turned the car around on his long driveway to head out onto the county road that fed into US 1. 

He glanced into the rearview mirror, at the house and the people clustered on its front steps: Bill and Beverly and Ben were jumping up and down and waving and yelling their goodbyes, while Richie stood still on the top step, watching Mike go.

Just as they shrank to the size of a dollhouse’s inhabitants, Richie raised his arm and waved. Mike stuck his left arm out of the window and gave a single wave back before he made a right turn, off his grandfather’s land and onto the open road, and left everything he knew behind him at last.


End file.
